That’s the weather for here in St Louis. Now you don’t have to go outside to tell, since I just told you.

Okay, so since starting the Whole 30 diet, how am I feeling? Well, I’m feeling okay. A little tired, and generally hungry all the time, but not wanting to eat anymore (technically you aren’t supposed to be hungry, but I find I can’t eat enough at meals to NOT be hungry afterwards, but I’m okay with that at this time as it’s only the third day.) The other thing is that I find myself thinking about food and planning my next meal constantly…I’m not sure how I feel having to think so much about food, but again, it’s only 30 days.

Yesterday I had a long run around Tower Grove Park (more than one time, as I’m sort of half marathon training…) and saw this awesome birthday cake. St Louis is having its 250th birthday this year and there are cakes placed all over the city! This is the first one I’ve seen, but I’ll have to seek out a few more. (They aren’t actual cakes, just FYI.)

Can you tell exactly where it is?

I had a rehearsal last night for a church service this weekend at St Francis de Sales Church. It is the second largest cathedral in the city (after the Basilica) and is absolutely gorgeous. And absolutely not heated, so it was quite cold last night. Luckily beautiful choir music (a Mass by Mozart) and great string playing kept us a bit warmer than we might have been…come check it out Sunday morning at 10 am! It’s a traditional Latin Mass.

My view—this is a very unimpressive picture, but it looked really awesome at the time, except for that light ruining everything.

I think my cat has managed to gain back a fair amount of her weight loss. This is of course, all my fault. But I love her anyway. Look at that soft creature!

I realized I have a lot of practice and some studying to do–we are preparing some new quartet music, I have a solo violin/piano recital booked for the fall and am being pretty ambitious with that repertoire, and there’s lots of other random stuff that I need to look over (opera…opera!).

I also have a couple books (one on Prokofiev Sonatas and one on Baroque String Playing) that I want to delve into a bit more than I have so far, and I need to figure out a bunch of stuff for my private teaching (repertoire, theory, that sort of thing) that I’ve been neglecting. I’m hoping the warmer weather and the diet (and thus, less social activities, ha) will make me a very productive Hannah!

Don’t forget: Celebrate Fitness is just around the corner! I’m in for the bootcamp and really looking forward to it. Check out my post about it and let me know if you have any questions!